Haunted

Chapter One

Going to college isn't all fun and games, I'll say that much. I mean, it started off wonderful. There were parties, exams, my first "official" boyfriend. I've never had one before him that actually took me on dates and brought me flowers; to me, he was suddenly the reason I came to college.

So, going to college has its perks, I suppose.

Oh, but the cons...

The parties are great, but the hangovers and showing up late to class barely able to hold my eyes open is not. Cramming for exams you knew about three weeks in advance is not a good idea, I should have been studying instead of goofing around. Drunk driving is a very bad thing to do, and can, in most instances, lead to someone dying.

Me, dying, to be exact.

What? I'm dead? But then what's going on?

Well, turns out, there's no white light. There's no anything. There's just a blank void from your heart stopping and starting. Apparently, I was dead for two whole minutes, and yet somehow the paramedics had gotten my heart to start up again in the ambulance.

Lucky me.

I don't remember anything, I don't even remember the accident. I can remember hanging out with my friends on the quad, it starting to get late, all of us getting hungry. I can remember kissing Liam, giggling at his stupid jokes and his half-cocked puns. I can remember some screeching noises, and that's about it.

The doctors said this is normal, it was extraordinary that I didn't have any brain damage from oxygen deprivation, and that my organs are all still working. The impact should have crushed me, and yet I escaped with some seat belt burns and a broken wrist. I mean, I guess the impact did kill me, for two whole minutes, which has been repeated to me over and over until I'm sick of hearing it.

I'm not the only one who died.

My roommate, she was the one who didn't come back. She's the one who did die on impact, who went on to whatever it is after death. She was thrown from the vehicle, she hadn't had her seatbelt on when she'd been driving. She'd been slung right through the windshield and into the woods.

Out of the remaining three of us, well, I was the most injured, I'd been in the passenger seat.

It's been three weeks since the accident, since Laura's family came and picked up all of her things. They'd been weeping, broken messes and all I could feel was guilt that I'd survived and she hadn't. I'd tried to help pack her things for them, I didn't want them to do it on their own, but I'd just managed to make myself cry with them.

Pictures of me and her covered our dorm room, of her with her brothers and sisters and cousins. She'd had a big family, all very close, she'd been from some small town and had been so excited to get out of it, to go to college and see the world. She'd wanted to be a vet and help all the little animals.

I should have died, I'd still switch places with her if I could. I don't have any family, I'd come out of the foster system and into college on scholarship. I was in foster care before I turned a year old, and I never found anywhere I belonged.

When I came to the school, everything had been so different. I had my own space, with Laura of course. There'd been so many people, and no one cared about who you were before. All anyone wanted to do was learn, or party, or just --- just everything.

But...

But now it seems like none of that matters anymore.

I sigh, leaning against the sink in the dorm bathroom. The showers are coed, and there are two on each floor. There is a guy a few rows down from me brushing his teeth while he listens to MC Hammer on repeat, the music so loud in his headphones I can hear every word. The girl to my right is primping for her weekly Thursday night date with her sugar daddy, painting her lips bubble gum pink and curling her hair.